operas--Vauxhall Gardens--Handel's "borrowings"--visit to
Ireland--_Messiah_ and other oratorios.


The collapse of the Opera left Handel not only bankrupt, but with seriously
endangered health. In April 1737 it had been announced that he was
"indisposed with the rheumatism," from which he made a slight temporary
recovery; but before the season was over it became clear that he was
suffering from paralysis. "His right arm was become useless to him," says
Mainwaring, "and how greatly his senses were disordered at intervals, for a
long time, appeared from an hundred instances, which are better forgotten
than recorded." With some difficulty his medical advisers persuaded him to
go to the sulphur bath of Aix-la-Chapelle, where, according to Mainwaring,
he submitted to prolonged and drastic treatment. His cure was considered
remarkably rapid, and the nuns (presumably nursing sisters) who heard him
play the organ within a few hours of leaving his bath ascribed it to a
miracle. "Such a conclusion," observes our clerical biographer, "in such
persons was natural enough."

It has been asserted that during his stay at Aix, Handel composed a cantata
for the five-hundredth anniversary of the foundation of Elbing, a town in
East Prussia between Danzig and Koenigsberg. A German researcher about 1869
appears to have discovered documents at Elbing mentioning the cantata,
with the name of the poet and that of a local singer, Jean du Grain, who
composed the recitatives; Handel "of London" was said to have composed the
choruses. No trace of the music has survived, and there seems to be no
evidence whatever to connect this work with Handel's visit to Aix. Nor is
it possible to suggest any reason why the authorities of this remote place
should have applied to Handel for a composition.